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Article: Reporting World War II: American Journalism 1938-1944.
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- November 6, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1995 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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"THE real war will never get in the books," Walt Whitman wrote in Specimen Days. This sentiment is echoed throughout Reporting World War II, the Library of America's superlatively edited new collection of wartime journalism. Time and again, those who were paid to tell Americans about the war confessed in print their feelings of inadequacy. Even Bill Mauldin, whose Up Front (reprinted in its entirety here) is perhaps the most vivid chronicle of its kind, felt unable to explain to civilians the essence of war:
You can't understand it by reading magazines or newspapers or by looking at pictures or by going to newsreels. You have to smell it and feel it all around you ...